Ch. 1: West vs. the Mountain

I stood at the foot of the mountain, despondent. It was against the rules to fly up the mountain, meaning that I was no better than the others in the game. I kicked a few rocks, cursing at all those robots who never let me live up to my full potential, and started to climb.
Lava spilled from the angry stone's depths, and odd creatures slithered toward me. The were Hacknoran cobras, and they were menacing.


"A contessssssssstant," they hissed. "We will take pleasssssure in eating you."


"Fat chance, forkface!" I flew into the air and crushed their pathetic skulls with boulders. I hope that using my flying ability was allowed in that situation--it's just not right when alien souls like mine are forced to hide!


Soon a spiked beetle felled the last cobra, and I looked up to see where it had come from. I saw, on top of the cliff, more creatures. Strange yet familiar, I doubted they were natives of Hacknor.

"Um. Hello, and thanks," I said. "So, uh, what are you up to?" I asked the turtle-thing, who identified himself as Koopa Troopa.

"Practicing baseball." The cute little thing cooed.


The freaky beetle-dropping cloud turtle, Lakitu, added, "We're practicing for the Mario baseball tournament. We reserved the Fire Island D ballpark with the Hacknor Board of Tourism, but they double-booked the field with a service for the evangelical sect of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti monster."


"Well, thanks for the help taking out the cobras, but we're, uh, kinda using the mountain to film a reality game show," I said, pointing to the camera guy.


Gah! What are those things?


Anyway, I continued on until I noticed that several of the rope bridges I passed had been cut. C'mon people, whatever happened to sportsmanship? However, a group of those freaky turtle-things, the Koopa Paratroopas, offered to help me across because using my power of flight to succeed would have been against the rules. I jumped on their shells and crossed to the other side.

At the summit, I could see for miles, all the way down to the bottom of the mountain. I saw avalanche damaged trees, broken sporting equipment, and a dead Jamaican bobsled team.


Damn. I wanted to meet those guys.


Everything turned out alright, though, because I met these guys:

Apparently they reserved the slopes with the Hacknor Board of Tourism, but they ended up double booked with our show. Something tells me that Hacknor should hire new people for their tourism board. I'll take that up with Jon later. They let me borrow a snowboard, and I shredded powder all the way down.

Hopefully, when this is all said and done, Jon can look me in the eye and say, "West, you are still in the running to be the Last Gladiator Standing."


...Sorry, my mom likes to sit on the couch like a broken robot lump and watch Top Model.